Genre: Literary Fiction
Page Count: 176
Adolescence and the teen years can be both nostalgic and despisable in retrospect. You had just become aware of your surroundings, the years of pacey and expansive learnings, from porn to girls, to hobbies and games. Yet while aware, you never really worried, like you start to do in your twenties. Therefore, looking back on those years can appear nostalgic because you weren’t as anxious about everything despite having become aware of things. It’s also when your consciousness fully forms, and you hate that period for it, because in retrospect you’ve now much to judge, hate, worry, and regret than you did at that time.
While I wouldn’t describe my teen years as particularly ‘sad’, nearing my twenties, life did start to bother me as I became more and more self-aware. I was a shy, obedient kid both at school and at home; youngest of the four brothers. I was well supported even in our below-average family income, and I had a lot to learn from those above and live to their expectations. My experiences were always under the shadow of others’ suggestions and judgements. While playing cricket earned me some friends, outside of it, by the time I was in college and now among girls too, I realized how lonely and unprepared I was for everything.
Unlike Chris and Toni, the protagonists of Barnes’s debut novel, who live in 1960s London and are adventurous, naughty, and witty, I was reserved, un-opiniated, and lonely. I was also living in small town in Pakistan. Reading ‘Metroland’, I was once again reminded of the cultural differences between what I read in English novels and the life I’ve lived.
Starting when they’re sixteen, the first part of this novel follows the lives of these two boys living in London’s Metroland in 1960s. Chris and Toni dislike their parents, love exploring, play witty games, and of course, share a curiosity about sex. In the second part, we find 21-year-old Chris in Paris, who from now on becomes the main protagonist, scoring his series of ‘firsts’: first sex, first love, first breakup. Part three, back in Metroland, and now both Chris and Toni have entered their thirties and find significant differences in how they live their lives.
For a short and debut novel, which took Barnes many years of doubts, turn-downs, and finally some luck to publish, it’s quite ambitious that it just doesn’t just talk about boyhood, but also its transition into twenties and then thirties. It makes for a more literary and complete novel.
However, the brevity of the novel leaves the story hallow, and instead goes for a witty, fun, and pacey storytelling. Moreover, and this was a deal-breaker for me, this novel is too involved in its surrounding and in the particularities of protagonists (a fictional Barnes presumably) that a reader without context would feel mostly disconnected from the story. All that French and clever-remarks, while impressive for those who can understand, was mostly off-putting for a reader like me who’s here without any familiarity. There’re however some great passages and paragraphs which reminded of Barnes’s best work ‘The Sense of an Ending’. Yet on the whole, it was an unremarkable read.
Ratings: 2/3 ** September 19, 2021_